- In 1989, the Tibetan Buddhist leader
known as the Dalai Lama
met with a group of six Jewish scholars.
During a series of meetings,
the Dalai Lama asked many questions,
but one was clearly the most pressing.
He said he wanted to learn the secret technique
of Jewish survival.
Obviously, the Dalai Lama saw parallels
in the experience of his own people,
who were exiled by the Chinese communists
in the second half of the 20th century,
and the history of the Jews.
He was worried about how his people would survive
and maintain their identity.
After all, most peoples who've been removed from their land
would be expected to disappear before long.
But he also recognized the extraordinary challenges faced
by the Jewish people in the Diaspora.
When Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah
were conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE,
Jews had lost all sovereignty in the land of Israel,
the temple was destroyed,
and much of the population was either killed
or driven into exile.
Every level of society,
from the poor farmer to the priests and the king,
was profoundly disrupted by the Babylonian conquest.
What could get a people through such destruction
and social upheaval?
After a great run of almost a thousand years,
it looked like the Jewish People would go the way
of so many ancient peoples,
to the memory of the history books.
How could a nation possibly remain intact
under these conditions?
In a word: Torah, in all of the different meanings
that word contains.
Turns out that it was portable,
and the Jewish nation took it on the road with them.
The Bible contained the Jews' history
and their national identity.
It gave them laws for daily living.
It reminded them of the holy festivals
and contained the texts
that they would read publicly in the synagogue,
which would become their miniature Temple.
The Torah provided them with sacred language for prayers.
And by reading, studying,
and praying in the original language,
they ensured that the Hebrew language would not disappear.
The Bible also spoke to the unity
and unique mission of the Jewish people,
providing the glue that kept the people together
during these troubled times.
And it offered the promise of redemption from exile,
which came to pass,
as Jeremiah had predicted, after 70 years.
That's when the Persians entered the scene
after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE.
Let's see where the Jews were
when the Babylonian exile came to an end.
First, there were the 10 tribes
who had lived in the northern kingdom
before it was conquered by Assyria.
They had been forcibly deported to places
where they were separated from their countrymen
and made to assimilate with the peoples around them.
Some small groups may have left the region altogether
for East Asia and Africa, remaining together,
while also taking on new national identities.
Traces of such populations have cropped up
throughout history, especially in recent years,
with ramifications for the modern state of Israel.
For example, there is a group of Jews in eastern India
who call themselves Bnei Menashe,
and trace their lineage to Menashe,
one of Joseph's sons and one of the lost tribes of Israel.
In recent years, they have fulfilled their dream
of moving to the land of Israel.
For the most part, though,
the Jews of the northern kingdom became lost
to the rest of the Jewish people.
In the southern kingdom,
the refugees from the Babylonian conquest of Judah
included the tribes of Judah and Benjamin,
as well as a portion of the Levites.
Some went to Egypt, especially the City of Alexandria.
The largest number went to Mesopotamia,
the birthplace of their ancestor Abraham.
The dispersions left the Jews a fragmented people,
scattered throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Persia.
Despite the hardships and persecution they faced,
Jews everywhere rebuilt their lives
and communities as best they could.
Jewish traditions provided structure for family life:
the education of children,
the responsibilities of each family member,
and even mealtimes were regulated
to some degree by Jewish law.
That same law guided the family
in its relationships with the larger community.
The people had to pay taxes and give charity.
When Shabbat was observed on Friday nights,
it brought all commercial life to a stop
and families came together.
According to the traditions recorded by the rabbis,
when the holidays arrived,
the community joined in prayer at the synagogue
and prepared festive meals for their families and guests.
Torah study gave the Jews knowledge of their past
and the roadmap for their future.
And of course, the inner spiritual life of the Jew
in exile was inspired by the prophecies
and belief in the one true God,
who would surely bring them out of exile
and back to their homeland when the time was right.
Without their portable Judaism and God's promise,
it seemed likely that the Jews would have disappeared
from the face of the earth entirely.
As we mentioned,
many Jews eventually ended up in the Persian empire.
The descendants of the Jews seized
and deportee from Judea by Nebuchadnezzar,
became a large and flourishing community.
Over time, Jewish learning centers flourished there,
and many scholars and prophets were prominent
in the royal palace, like Daniel,
advisor to the Persian kings.
The most important Persian ruler,
from a Jewish perspective, was Cyrus the Great.
When the Persians defeated the Babylonians,
they also inherited their territory,
which included the land of Israel.
Cyrus issued a proclamation that allowed the Jewish exiles
to return to their land and rebuild the temple.
Now, it's true that Cyrus adopted a similar policy
toward other nations that had been vassal states of Babylon,
but hey, he still earned a lot of goodwill in the hearts
and minds of the Jewish leaders.
In fact, they looked back at the Persians
as being the best of the foreign rulers over Israel
and even spoke highly of them.
About 45 years after Cyrus left the scene,
in the year 486 BCE,
a far less competent king began to rule over Persia.
Historians typically know him as Xerxes,
but in the Bible he's called Achashverosh.
According to the Book of Esther,
he became part of Jewish history through his marriage
to a Jewish woman, Esther,
who is known as one of the greatest heroines of all time.
Jews know about Esther through the biblical book
that bears her name.
It's read twice on the holiday of Purim,
an exuberant and joyous day which is celebrated
with lavish feasting, drinking, wearing costumes,
and giving gifts to the poor and food to our friends.
The Scroll of Esther, or "Megillat Esther",
as it's commonly known,
tells the story of how Esther saved her people
from annihilation at the hands of a hatemonger
known as Haman.
Beginning in the 19th century,
people like him would be labeled antisemites.
Esther showed great bravery and wisdom
and stood up for her people when no one else could.
Here's what we know about Esther
at this crucial time in Jewish history.
She was an orphan, adopted by her cousin Mordechai.
Mordechai was a descendant of a man named Kish
from the tribe of Benjamin,
who was exiled from Jerusalem over 100 years earlier.
Esther and Mordechai lived in Shushan,
the Persian kingdom's capital,
which was the seat of the Persian government
and where Mordechai worked in the palace of the king.
Speaking of the king, Achashverosh ruled his country
in the most unusual way.
When we meet him at the beginning of the story,
he's hosting a six-month long drinking keger
for his servants, the nobility, the army,
and all of the common people to show off his wealth.
Maybe this was the ancient equivalent
of buying people's votes by handing out free stuff?
To impress his officials, he called on his queen, Vashti,
to appear before them and show off her beauty.
When she refused, the king didn't know what to do.
He asked his close advisors,
who told him that her personal insult
of the king was really a matter of national concern.
In Achashverosh's kingdom,
it seemed that no one was actually in control.
This was a dangerous situation
because someone with an agenda
could easily have influenced policy to fill the power void.
More on that later.
At the suggestion of his advisors,
Vashti was executed and the king next conducted a search
for the most beautiful virgin in the country
to fill the role of queen.
Esther was taken to the palace,
where she was presented to the king
and eventually made his wife.
Esther didn't tell anyone, including the king,
that she was Jewish.
For that matter,
Mordechai seemed to have kept his Jewish background a secret
from his coworkers at the palace as well.
But he couldn't keep it a secret forever.
The king's servants eventually wanted to know
why Mordechai didn't bow down
to the king's chief advisor, Haman,
and Mordechai then told them it was because he was a Jew.
Haman became enraged at Mordechai when he learned this,
and he plotted to destroy all the Jews of Persia.
Since Persia was a vast empire
with 127 countries and provinces,
Hama's plan effectively meant
that he was against every Jew on the planet.
To determine when he should attack,
he cast lots, or "pur", in Persian.
That's how the holiday of Purim got its name
and the date was set for 11 months later.
Haman was so worked up that he even built a special gallows
on which to hang Mordechai.
Haman also didn't have a hard time
selling his genocidal plan to the king.
He started by giving Achashverosh a truthful
and harmless description of the Jews:
"There is a certain people scattered
"and dispersed in the kingdom;
"and their laws are different from those of every people."
But he put a dual loyalty twist on it
that antisemites throughout history have continued to use.
"And they don't keep the king's laws;
"therefore it doesn't benefit the king to keep them around."
With the king's agreement, Haman sent out a decree
to annihilate the Jews throughout the entire Persian empire.
Mordechai begged Esther to intervene
in order to save the Jews.
She was reluctant,
because approaching the king uninvited would put her
in great danger, possibly even the death penalty.
Mordechai helped her realize that perhaps it was
for this very moment that she was made queen.
Thus, Esther heeded her call to action.
In a brilliant move, Esther invited Achashverosh
and Haman to a banquet in the royal palace.
And at the meal, she made a request,
to have another banquet the next day
with the same dinner guests.
The king must have been wondering what was going on.
He could see that she was troubled
and told her that she could have anything she wanted.
Maybe he wondered why Haman was invited?
Was there a palace coup in the works?
Was there something romantic going on
between Esther and Haman?
At the second banquet Esther finally burst out
with the truth: She was Jewish
and her entire nation would be annihilated
at Haman's command!
She asked Achashverosh to reverse the decree.
The king first ordered that Haman be hanged
on the very gallows he'd prepared for Mordechai.
Then, letters were sent out to all the provinces
giving the Jews the right to defend themselves
against their enemies.
Now, that seems a little odd.
If the goal is to protect the Jews,
why not just rescind Haman's decree?
Well, it turns out that once a law was on the books,
it couldn't be retracted.
So they had to make a new,
special law for the benefit of the Jews.
Consequently, the Jews defeated their enemies,
and the day on which the Jews were to be destroyed,
turned into a day of victory and joy.
It's as they say:
"They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat."
That's Jewish history in a nutshell.
Not really, but the cycle of oppression
and salvation has repeated itself many times
throughout Jewish history.
It's also why, on Passover, we read in the Haggadah:
"In every generation, they rise up to annihilate us,
"but the Holy One saves us from their hand."
The Jewish people were sustained in the exile
by their religious and national identities.
Their prophetic scriptures and faith taught them
that they were expelled from the land for a reason
and that they would return to the Land of Israel.
Their laws and culture created a community
that could even endure outside the land of Israel.
And with strong leaders like Esther,
who confronted their moments of truth
with courage and wisdom, the Jewish people persevered
even in the face of genocidal enemies.
Around the same time that Esther was queen,
other leaders, like Ezra and Nehemiah,
would return to Israel to build up the community there.
Jewish continuity never seemed more improbable
than in these early days of exile,
but the secret technique of Jewish survival would prove
that the Jews were up to the challenge.
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